LITMIR.BIZ

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Lucky O’Donlon was in charge of the op—mostly because he’d come up with a particularly devious plan that had tickled Captain Joe Cat’s dark sense of humor. The lieutenant had decided that a small team of SEALs would swim out to the yacht—named Swiss Chocolate, a stupid-ass name for a boat—board it covertly, gain access to the bridge and do a little creative work on their computerized navigational system.

      As in making the yacht’s captain think they were heading south when they were really heading northwest.

      Bad dude would give the order to head back toward South America, and instead they’d zoom toward Miami—into the open arms of the Federal task force.

      It was just too good.

      Bobby and Wes had been selected by Lieutenant O’Donlon to gain covert access to the bridge of the yacht. And Rio was going along for the ride.

      “I knew damn well they didn’t need me there,” he told Thomas and Mike now. “In fact, I was aware I was slowing them down.” Bobby and Wes didn’t need to talk, didn’t need to make hand signals. They barely even looked at each other—they just read each other’s minds. It was so freaky. Rio had seen them do similar stuff on a training op, but somehow out in the real world it seemed even more weird.

      “So what happened, Rosetti?” Thomas King asked. The tall African-American ensign was impatient—not that he’d ever let it show on his face. Thomas was an excellent poker player. Rio knew that firsthand, having left the table with empty pockets on more than one occasion.

      Most of the time Thomas’s face was unreadable, his expression completely neutral, eyelids half-closed. The combination of that almost-bland expression and his scars—one bisecting his eyebrow and the other branding one of his high cheekbones—gave him a dangerous edge that Rio wished his own far-too-average face had.

      But it was Thomas’s eyes that made most people cross the street when they saw him coming. So dark-brown as to seem black, his eyes glittered with a deep intelligence—the man was Phi Beta Kappa and a member of the Mensa club. His eyes also betrayed the fact that despite his slouched demeanor, Thomas King was permanently at Defcon Five—ready to launch a deadly attack without hesitation if the need arose.

      He was Thomas. Not Tommy. Not even Tom. Thomas. Not one member of Team Ten ever called him anything else.

      Thomas had won the team’s respect. Unlike Rio, who somehow, despite his hope for a nickname like Panther or Hawk, had been given the handle Elvis. Or even worse, Little Elvis or Little E.

      Holy Chrysler. As if Elvis wasn’t embarrassing enough.

      “We took a rubber duck out toward the Swiss Chocolate,” Rio told Thomas and Mike. “Swam the rest of the way in.” The swift ride in the little inflatable boat through the darkness of the ocean had made his heart pound. Knowing they were going to board a heavily guarded yacht and gain access to her bridge without anyone seeing them had a lot to do with it. But he was also worried.

      What if he blew it?

      Bobby apparently could read Rio’s mind almost as easily as he read Wes Skelly’s, because he’d touched Rio’s shoulder—just a brief squeeze of reassurance—before they’d crept out of the water and onto the yacht.

      “The damn thing was lit up like a Christmas tree and crawling with guards,” Rio continued. “They all dressed alike and carried these cute little Uzi’s. It was almost like their boss got off on pretending he had his own little army. But they weren’t any kind of army. Not even close. They were really just street kids in expensive uniforms. They didn’t know how to stand watch, didn’t know what to look for. I swear to God, you guys, we moved right past them. They didn’t have a clue we were there—not with all the noise they were making and the lights shining in their eyes. It was so easy it was a joke.”

      “If it were a joke,” Mike Lee asked, “then what’s Chief Taylor doing in the hospital?”

      Rio shook his head. “No, that part wasn’t a joke.” Someone on board the yacht had decided to move the party up from down below and go for a midnight swim. Spotlights had switched on, shining down into the ocean, and all hell had broken loose. “But up until the time we were heading back into the water, it was a piece of cake. You know that thing Bobby and Wes can do? The telepathic communication thing?”

      Thomas smiled. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen them look at each other and—”

      “This time they didn’t,” Rio interrupted his friend. “Look at each other, I mean. You guys, I’m telling you, this was beyond cool—watching them in action like this. There was one guard on the bridge, okay? Other than that, it was deserted and pretty dark. The captain and crew are all below deck, right? Probably getting stoned with the party girls and the guests. So anyway, the chiefs see this guard and they don’t break stride. They just take him temporarily out of the picture before he even sees us, before he can even make a sound. Both of them did it—together, like it’s some kind of choreographed move they’ve been practicing for years. I’m telling you, it was a thing of beauty.”

      “They’ve been working with each other for a long time,” Mike pointed out.

      “They went through BUD/S together,” Thomas reminded them. “They’ve been swim buddies from day one.”

      “It was perfection.” Rio shook his head in admiration. “Sheer perfection. I stood in the guard’s place, in case anyone looked up through the window, then there’d be someone standing there, you know? Meanwhile Skelly disabled the conventional compass. And Bobby broke into the navigational computers in about four seconds.”

      That was another freaky thing about Bobby Taylor. He had fingers the size of ballpark franks, but he could manipulate a computer keyboard faster than Rio would have thought humanly possible. He could scan the images that scrolled past on the screen at remarkable speeds, too.

      “It took him less than three minutes to do whatever it was he had to do,” he continued, “and then we were out of there—off the bridge. Lucky and Spaceman were in the water, giving us the all-clear.” He shook his head, remembering how close they’d been to slipping silently away into the night. “And then all these babes in bikinis came running up on deck, heading straight for us. It was the absolute worst luck—if we’d been anywhere else on the vessel, the diversion would’ve been perfect. We would’ve been completely invisible. I mean, if you’re an inexperienced guard are you going to be watching to see who’s crawling around in the shadows or are you going to pay attention to the beach bunnies in the thong bikinis? But someone decided to go for a swim off the starboard side—right where we were hiding. These heavy-duty searchlights came on, probably just so the guys on board could watch the women in the water, but wham, there we were. Lit up. There was no place to hide—and nowhere to go but over the side.”

      “Bobby picked me up and threw me overboard,” Rio admitted. He must not have been moving fast enough—he was still kicking himself for that. “I didn’t see what happened next, but according to Wes, Bobby stepped in front of him and blocked him from the bullets that started flying while they both went into the water. That was when Bobby caught a few—one in his shoulder, another in the top of his thigh. He was the one who was hurt, but he pulled both me and Wes down, under the water—out of sight and out of range.”

      Sirens went on. Rio had been able to hear them along with the tearing sound of the guards’ assault weapons and the screams from the women, even as he was pulled underwater.

      “That was when the Swiss Chocolate took off,” Rio said. He had to smile. “Right for Miami.”

      They’d surfaced to watch, and Bobby had laughed along with Wes Skelly. Rio and Wes hadn’t even realized he’d been hit. Not until he spoke, in his normal, matter-of-fact manner.

      “We better get moving, get back to the boat, ASAP,” Bobby had said evenly. “I’m shark bait.”

      “The chief was bleeding badly,” Rio told his friends. “He was hurt worse even than he realized.” And the water hadn’t been cold enough to staunch

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